Yes, well. If one lives in the Flats, one generally does not have the currency to buy the finer homes on the upper steps, in the Scales or the Crown—the third and fourth steps, you see? The Horned Palace sits at the head of it all, behind the veil of the fog.
Steps meaning streets, I guessed. The street right above ours looked roughly the same, with a few strange, shadowy shapes I couldn’t fully make out. The third step, the Scales, had neater versions of the homes down here, but they were stacked on top of each other—three, four, five stories high. Each level of each teetering house had its own roof, all of them curling up like grasping claws.
You are overawed by the dark majesty, Alastor said. I understand. Look upon my kingdom and tremble, mortal—
“What’s up with the street at the top—all of those massive trees?” I interrupted, pointing. They looked taller and wider than even the redwoods in California, only without any leaves.
It might have been the distance, but the bark on them looked like it had petrified into stone. Whole sections of the trees were missing chunks, as if they’d been picked at by massive crows. Their long, spindly limbs protruded up into the sky, like the legs of a dead spider on its back.
Not trees, you treacherous rag, Alastor said, exasperated. Nothing so disgusting as plants grows here. That is the Crown—see how the towers ring around like the peaks of a diadem? It is where the noble fiend families reside. It is where my own tower remains, waiting for me. That one, right at the center. Only . . .
“Only what?” I pressed. His tower was taller than the rest, of course, the dark prongs spiraling up and up into the hovering vapor until they disappeared into it. There looked to be some kind of metal staircase winding up the side of it, too, like a snake trapping its prey.
There are . . . far fewer towers than I recall. They did not lean quite so. And this is truly odd—
“I don’t know what could possibly be odd about any of this,” I said.
Odd, he began again, ignoring me, because at the head of each tower there should be a glowing mass of magic, like watchful eyes over the realm. That is where the families kept their hoard, to keep it far from the envious peasants in the Flats.
“Wow, you’re serious about this peasant thing,” I muttered. The condition of the buildings on this step showed neglect and wear in a way that made my stomach twist. The fiends down here must have lived smog-ridden lives, constantly afraid their sloping roofs would fall in over their heads.
Not that I cared about the living conditions of fiends. At all.
Of course, we occasionally stoop to come down and enjoy the merriment of mingling with lesser fiends. You cannot find a better glass of beetled juice anywhere in the realm, largely because it contains the tears of the wretched creature pouring it.
I ignored him. My eyes had finally adjusted to the dark, and high up on the Crown, I could now make out lines of chains that wrapped around several of the towers. Most seemed to run from the tops of the structures all the way to the ground below. Between them, fading in and out of the vapor, were structures that looked like they had been carved from single, massive stones. In the shadow of the grand towers, they seemed so simple. Almost primal.
“All right,” I said. I’d wasted enough time gawking, but it was hard to look away. Every time I blinked I seemed to catch something new. The stone-dragon gargoyles curling around the roof of a house. The glinting blades at the peaks of each building, waiting to pierce the soft belly of any creature that dared to land on them. A metal fence capped with skulls of different shapes and sizes. Distant orange banners.
For once, I was seeing something—I was doing something—no other Redding had done. Not just the Reddings, but all humans.
I’m not at all sorry to disappoint you, but twenty-seven humans have accidentally found themselves Downstairs after falling through open mirror portals. You are not the first, nor are you the only.
“Really?” I asked, gazing up at the towers. “What happened to them?”
One was eaten by a troll, one managed to escape only to be dragged back by a howler, and the rest—
“You know what?” I said. “Never mind. I can live without knowing.”
Finally, I tore my gaze away, returning it to the empty street around us. I’d just have to commit as much as I could of this place to memory and try to sketch it later. And then bury those sketches so no one got worried I’d taken a turn for the dark and strange, and locked me in my room forever.
Time to get going, I thought. Prue was waiting. Every second that passed was another one in which Prue could be hurt. Or, I guess, eaten by a troll. I really missed those few precious moments before I found out that was an actual possibility.
“Let’s get out of here before the resting hour or whatever is up,” I said. “Do you think that Pyra would keep her at the Horrible Palace?”
Horned Palace, Maggot. Though it truly is horrible in its majesty—
I turned to find the nearest stairs to start what looked to be a long climb, only to stop. Realization hit me, slowing my steps along with my blood. I looked again, squinting. But as the cloud of vapor and dust drew up into the air, something else seemed to be missing.
“Is the palace cursed or something?” I asked. “Is the human eye not supposed to be able to see it?”
The step above where the towers had once sat was rimmed with a low stone wall, with nothing but sky beyond it.
No, Alastor said weakly. ’Tis not.
The palace wasn’t there at all.
“Al? Still with me?”
I kicked a chunk of stone down the street, watching it disappear into a pile of mauled metal baskets. Whatever food they’d held was long gone, devoured by rot or the dozens of rats scampering along the edges of the street.
Without wood, everything—from the empty, animal-less carts to doors to signs to the skeletal vendor stands—was hammered out of metal.
Of course, Alastor was still with me. The malefactor talked about human emotions as if they were flavors—a sour pain, coppery anger, salty defiance. But I felt his emotions like the changing of the seasons. Right now it was winter in my mind. Every last one of his thoughts seemed to have iced over with dread.
Will you ever cease with that pernicious nickname?
Finally. If there was one thing I could count on to rally, it was that ego. “We don’t have time to mope. If the palace is gone, where would Pyra keep Prue?”
Mope? I’m no fool—
“No, I mean, we can’t just walk in circles while you feel sorry for yourself.”
He sneered. Of course a mortal would not understand.
“I do understand,” I said. “But—hey, look. There’s a rat eating another rat. You love that kind of thing. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”
He sniffed. It does, just.
One of the rats unhinged its jaw like a snake and devoured the enemy rat whole. I took a generous step back, then crossed to the other side of the deserted street. Folding myself into the shadows, I leaned back against a stack of massive empty cages. Nearby, a new crack split the cobblestones, sending up a hissing wall of vapor. I jumped as a piece of faded parchment tore off a nearby door and slapped me in the face.
CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE QUEEN. REMAIN IN THE FLATS AND RISK THE DEVOURING OF THE VOID, I read. There was a black wax seal of a horned skull with a crown above it at the bottom, followed by the words LONG MAY SHE RAGE. “What’s the Void?”
Alastor took away something else entirely from the parchment. How dare she present herself as queen when, under her so-called reign, the Horned Palace has fallen for the first time in over five thousand years!
Now that I was looking, I saw the broadsheets everywhere. Tacked onto doors, papering over windows, blowing like tumbleweeds under the urging of the vapors streaming up from the ground. Alastor was wrong. The fiends weren’t resting. They weren’t on this step at all.
“This is so creepy,” I whispered.
Thank you, Alastor said.
“Unintentionally creepy,” I corrected. “You really don’t know what the Void is . . . ?”
A cold prickling broke out across my skin, turning the hair on the back of my neck to needles. The moment sharpened, and the vapors quieted just enough for my ears to detect the sound.
Footsteps.
I spun around, eyes frantically skimming the buildings nearby. All the doors were chained up, with metal gates covering the alleyways. There was nowhere to hide.
Another step, closer now.
“What do I do?” I breathed out.
Into that barrel, Alastor said, his own fear igniting mine, quickly!
Two metal barrels had been overturned in the street. I pried the cover off one, choking on its pungent vinegar-like stench as I crawled inside and frantically pulled the lid shut behind me.
A thin ray of green light filtered in through a split at the barrel’s seam. I pressed my eye against the crack and held my breath.
A long, dark snout appeared through the vapor and drew in a deep sniff. Drool dripped over its protruding fangs, catching in its shaggy black coat and hissing like acid as it hit the cobblestones.
My pulse began to trill like a violin as the massive dog passed by the barrel, its blade-like claws clicking and scraping against the debris in the street. Another one followed close behind the first, stopping only to snap up one of the crimson rats. I cringed at the agonized screech that followed.
The words seemed to ooze out of them like blood from a fresh wound. “Hunt Alastor. Take boy. Hunt Alastor. Take boy. . . .”
Howlers.
Nell and I had been chased across Salem by a pack of them. They’d been sent to search for Alastor.
Be still, Alastor told me. Be calm.
I clenched my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. One of the howlers had the sweater I’d stripped off in its jaws.
Oh, crap. Why hadn’t I just taken it with us? All they had to do was track the scent of waste and mud—
This barrel once contained beetled juice, Alastor said. The smell is still potent enough to disguise your own.
I managed to take in a small, shaking breath as they finally passed, lumbering down the street. My eyes watered from the stench of the vinegar, and I risked looking away to wipe them against my arm. When I looked back, there was a different fiend standing in the street.
The shape of it was humanlike, only it had to be almost eight feet tall—and growing. I pressed my hand against my mouth as its long torso contorted, stretching out like putty to inspect something on the ground.
A drop of blood.
I clamped my free hand down on the wound that the bat had left. Stupid, stupid, stupid! If they could track me by my human smell, like Alastor had said, they could do it by my blood, too. And in all that walking, I must have left a handy trail for them.
One of the fiend’s long fingers swept down to collect the splotch of it off the stones. His mouth nearly encircled his whole head, and it opened wide, like it was on a hinge, to reveal rows of jagged teeth. A black tongue snaked out, licking at the blood. The fiend purred at the taste.
Every inch of his wrinkled skin was a sickly green. He was entirely hairless, save for the long, thin black strands that drifted down over his shoulders to the dried-out snake serving as his belt. The blade strapped to his hip was serrated like a saw. Glowing moths clung to the back of his long black trench coat, gnawing at the holes and slashes already there.
As the fiend turned, I saw that he had a small bottle tied to the leather band he wore across his bony chest. It glowed with a few wisps of fluttering magic.
A slate roof tile fell from the pub, smashing against the ground. The fiend spun toward the sound, two flaps of skin on his face peeling back to reveal eight eyes. The howlers pounced back to his side, growling.
What . . . is that? I thought at Al.
A ghoul, he said. Be wary. They regard humans as little more than fleshy dumplings.
“Thinskin . . . I know that you are out there,” the ghoul said, his voice gurgling. “I know this, too: you can only hide for so long. Surrender to me now and the queen may allow your sister, she of the bloodred hair, to keep her life—or, at least, the rest of her fingers.”
Anger surged through me, and it took every last bit of control I had to stay there, curled up and powerless.
Resist, Prosperity. Do not give in to your fury at his taunting words. Pyra knows she may only use your sister as leverage so long as she is unharmed. Resist.
I forced myself to breathe out through my nose, closing my eyes. It felt like a full hour passed before the ghoul’s shuffling footsteps finally faded and I could no longer hear the heavy pants of the howlers. By then, my muscles were cramped and I was feeling a little light-headed from the smell. I started to rise, only to hear a distant thundering.
What now? I asked, another wave of anger washing over me. We couldn’t keep wasting time here hiding like a mouse in a hole. I couldn’t see anything through the crack in the barrel’s seam. It must have been a storm.
No, Alastor said. Wait. The ground trembled, as if with steps. Be silent for a moment more.
Which was, of course, the exact moment my empty stomach didn’t just growl—it roared.
That was you! I hissed.
That was you! Alastor hissed back.
The lid creaked open. Dim green light spilled inside the barrel, only to be blotted out as a massive hand reached in and locked around my throat.
Fiends had an array of responses to terror—a whole world of them. Spitting, launching poisoned quills, melting, turning themselves invisible, transforming. Humans, unfortunately, were limited to two responses: fight or flight.
Alas, the boy had neither of these options available to him as the ogre lifted him out of the barrel and held him dangling in the air. Prosper’s nails and puny mortal fingers were useless as they tried to scratch their way to freedom. Her grip tightened as she drew the boy closer for inspection.
The boy had thought ogres resembled the frogs of the human world, and Alastor supposed that he could see a passing resemblance. Their skin was smooth and a highly becoming mixture of gray, brown, and green. Freckle-like spots covered the place where her mouth jutted out sharply, like a beak. Two small tusks curled up on either side of it.
“Can you not read the signs, fiend?” the ogre said. “Did someone place a deathwish on you that compelled you to return here? The Void will be on this place within days, perhaps hours. Quicklance—look! I told you we would find fools scrounging around down here. This one reeks of beetled juice. Too out of his mind with it to realize the danger he’s in!”
Alastor startled at how fine the ogre’s speech was, how carefully the words were chosen, even if they were slightly distorted by her oversized fangs. Ogres, with their extraordinarily dim wits and sturdy frames, had only ever been given mindless tasks, such as stacking stones and supporting collapsing buildings with their shoulders. It was all their tadpole-sized brains could manage. Why had anyone bothered with the thankless task of educating them?
Another ogre appeared farther down the road, stepping out from the abandoned building he’d been inspecting.
Like a jolt of a fire scorpion’s poison alighting through him, a half-realized thought finally came together. Alastor realized what was truly behind his growing shivers of dismay.
The ogres each wore near-impenetrable dragonhide armor and an orange spidersilk sash that stretched from shoulder to hip. In other words, the uniform of the King’s Guard. The ruler’s most trusted and deadly warriors, elite fighters who would not hesitate to put down a threat or offer up their lives in his defense. His father’s Guard had been composed mostly of lycans who had survived their first bout of moon sickness and emerged on the other side of it with clear, highly trainable minds.
To think that Pyra had given such an honor to ogres . . . Alastor wanted his physical form more than ever now, if only to vomit. Were his father’s old forces so depleted that she’d grant this power
to lesser fiends? What was next? A hob overseeing the royal vaults?
Al . . . Al . . . AL—ALASTOR! The boy’s voice finally intruded on his thoughts. Help? Maybe?
“Say . . . what manner of fiend are you?” the ogre demanded.
Not a word, Alastor warned. The boy was crusted in dung and the tangy scent of beetled juice. The ogres would not necessarily be able to identify him as human until they took the time to scrub him.
Another ogre lowered his face to peer directly into the boy’s. Putrid breath fanned out between his fangs, making the boy wince. “See his pale skin? Beneath the dung? Vampyre.”
You do have the pallor of the newly dead, Alastor observed.
It’s not summer, the boy said indignantly, of course I’m pale!
“Oooooooh,” the others said.
“But his teeth—” The female ogre gripped Prosper’s face, forcing his mouth open with her thumbs. “These couldn’t cut a worm. I’ve seen bigger fangs on a blood viper.”
“No, no, this makes good sense, don’t you see, Orca?” said the other. “He has shaved his fangs down. He has smeared dung on himself to pass by unnoticed while the rest of his kind have been taken. He thinks he tricks us—that he is smarter than us—but he is wrong! He is a leech!”
“Er,” Prosper began. “Wait a second—”
Being mistaken for a noble vampyre is an honor, Maggot.
Orca tightened her grip on the boy’s collar enough to make him choke.
Should we run? the boy asked. Can you use your power?
Not without revealing myself, Alastor said. Give me time. I will find a solution.
Alastor felt the boy’s conflict, his lack of trust, but brushed it aside. He was cunning, the most cunning of all of his siblings, perhaps even his kind. Surely, if Alastor could do nothing else in this wretched time of his life, he could outfox three ogres.
“Splendid,” Orca said, her smile growing. “If we hurry, we will make the fire.”
The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 3